Fine. I know this thread is going to go up in flames, but, hell, I'll throw my ten pence in.
Trigger warning: I have a special place in hell for political correctness. If you employ it or wish to see it employed, my opinion will probably offend you. A lot.
Political correctness is just another way of saying "my views are superior to yours, because I feel they are superior to yours." At the end of the day, an offensive comment, or joke, or otherwise, is just a series of sounds or images produced by the human mouth or hands, interpreted by a human brain, and processed into language. In the marketplace of free ideas, a shitty idea will sink all on its own. Racism is not profitable, sexism is not sustainable, homophobic laws and institutions are expensive to maintain. You want historical examples of why the marketplace of free ideas will always trump political correctness? Look at Nazi Germany,
* and the Roman Empire as historical examples.
Nazi Germany didn't fail because of inherent flaws in their ideology. Don't get me wrong: It didn't help the matter that their ideology made everyone their de facto enemy at some point, but that's not what killed the Third Reich. You know what did? Fucking murdering millions of potential recruits into their army in absurdly expensive concentration camps that consumed utterly insane amounts of resources in terms of manpower to maintain. I'm not even talking about the Jews: I'm talking about everyone else who was sent to the camps to get killed off, like the gays. Refusing to allow atheists to service in the SS. So on. What fucking wrecked Nazi Germany was shooting their manpower values in the foot. They could have legitimately invaded Great Britain if they had enough manpower for their planned naval invasion, but they didn't have it. They needed hundreds of thousands more men to complete a successful invasion. Men that they were throwing into a meatgrinder called Auschwitz because of discrimination. Discrimination that they relied upon to maintain an aura of fear that was ever slipping from them every time the facade of their invincibility was cracked and their politically correct media was unable to cover it up.
Meanwhile, in the United States, they got past at least some of their discrimination against women to not only allow, but actively endorse and encourage them to work in factories producing munitions. The US suffered some of the fewest munition shortages in the war as a result.
Then, look at the Roman Empire. One of the biggest and longest lasting empires to have ever existed. An empire that went
out of its way to set barbarian clans against each other, to recruit mercenaries, to try and "romanize" the non-roman. They were just as ruthless, dictatorial, violent, and they were definitely more deranged than Nazi Germany. (Lookin' at you, Caligula. Lookin' at you.) Yet they actually made an effort to incorporate foreigners into their armies on a repeated basis, to "civilize" and incorporate non-roman peoples in productive ways. They also had the distinct advantage that there
was no major world powers who would oppose their regime in the name of freedom. (ala: United States circa World War 2.) In the end, the Roman Empire still fell: You cannot hold a repressed people by force of arms forever, and when the fear factor is gone, all it takes is a couple successful sparks of rebellion to destroy an entire empire, no matter how powerful it may be. The ideal of freedom for the barbarians was cheaper to maintain than the massive, rotted out husk of an infrastructural network that the empire attempted to maintain in terms of repression.
When the marketplace of free ideas is allowed to operate of its own volition without political or social interference, the ideas which best promote the needs and rights of either the many, or the one, always succeed over those ideas which require suppression of entire groups of people. It takes interfering with that marketplace to allow bad ideas to flourish. You know who else acted in the name of political correctness to silence speech and ideas that was deemed offensive? Nazi Germany. The USSR. Communist China. North Korea. Iran. Medieval Europe & The Catholic Church. Feudal Japan. Imperial Japan. Every single Chinese dynasty which justified itself by the Mandate of Heaven. The Roman Empire...
You know what happened to most of these? No matter how powerful, no matter how long lasting?
They rotted from within, stagnated because new ideas were constantly suppressed, and were eventually overthrown by people who wanted the freedom to speak their minds and live their lives the way they wanted.
Political correctness is the same fucking muzzle used by fascists and dictators to deny people their right to speak their minds. I loathe it. I'm disgusted by it. It's a prettied up way of saying "I support freedom of speech, but only so long as people use it to agree with my values."
Meanwhile, the marketplace of good ideas is what spawned the LGBT movement banding together and fighting for equal rights. The marketplace of good ideas is what spawned first wave feminism demanding that women should be given the right to vote, and second wave's ideal of ending discrimination in the work place. The marketplace of good ideas is what spawned the notion that ownership over other people is horrible, as Great Britain set sail across the Atlantic to destroy the slave trade.
When bigots are free to speak their mind, all others are free to see it for what it is, point out how fucking stupid it is, and allow the naive to learn through honest discourse, rather than regimented propaganda.
Who gets to determine when political correctness is "too far" as an overall, universal structure? People both anti and for political correctness, who gets to determine?
The only ones who can feasibly perpetuate a politically correct value (ex: "this joke is too offensive, ban it") are institutions. So, specifically: Large-scale private corporations (especially social media giants like Facebook), the government, and educational institutions. IE, the three pinnacles of instituting any tyrannical regime bent on suppressing people who commit "wrongthink."
- Brainwashing children into ideologies at an age where they're too young to question it. (Grade school & junior high.) Or, conversely, reeducation programs for those adults who refuse to capitulate. (Post-secondary.) IE: Creationism 101.
- Suppressing the ability for those who disagree with said ideologies from having public platforms to speak upon. (No-platforming, social justice (ex: The Salem Witch Trials, expulsion of communists in 1950's USA, et cetera), government censorship, media censorship, criminal penalties for offensive language, et cetera.)
- Consuming and refusing to produce additional content based on a perceived lesser value as a result of discrimination, on a large scale. (Ex: Refusing to allow LGBT couples in big screen movies, "because it wouldn't be profitable.")
The more you can prevent the spread of good ideas, the easier it is for you to maintain your shitty, discriminatory ones. Like political correctness, which is the primary tool by which people attempt to suppress others.
*Yes, I know, Godwin's law, haw haw, fuck off. Just saying "Godwin's Law" counters nothing, because it's not a counter argument: It's an observation. A blatantly obvious one, because the last major conflict in human history that took millions of lives in open warfare that affected the entire planet... Was World War II. If we were living in Roman times, would we call it "Caesar's Law" or something equally ludicrous?